Boards

I'm not talking about someone on maternity leave popping in with the baby for ten minutes so everyone can coo then sodding off again. A head honcho here has brought their four-year-old (or thereabouts) in with them, they've been sat in a chair next to their desk all day. Mostly kept quiet, using an iPad with headphones, occasionally talking quite loudly to himself or at his dad (who's quite busy), which is winding up other people.

i'd rather they were in work with their kid, than phoning in needing to take the day off and work from home because they had no other option.
one of the boys in here had his 3 year old all afternoon a couple of days ago, she got on with colouring in whilst he got on doing what he does, essentially advanced colouring in as he was doing some graphics.

just thought there was a thread in it. The man's a psycho ballbreaker so if anything it's chilled him out.

Think the only thing that really winds me up is that he's a boss so this is fine, whereas if a peon like me bought a distraction like a kid in, it wouldn't go down well. I guess those are the benefits you get for climbing the greasy pole.

to your business, from being in a position of high importance and trust, where certain issues can't be readily delegated or dealt with remotely, and you have been reduced to taking your kid into work rather than deal with it from home. feel a bit sorry for the poor bastard. He's quite likely entirely strung out trying to balance work and home life as it is.

Even if it was massively disruptive to my work, chances are that my work is slightly less critically important than that of the person who has had no other option than to bring their child into the office.
I'm kind of in two minds- because hell is other people's children, and work can be hard enough without having to deal with small people getting in the way. And of course, health and safety/ potential disruption etc etc.
on the other hand, I wonder if it's not the worst idea to encourage this a bit more- show our children where we work, demonise mummy or daddy's workplace less, and also promote less of a harsh demarcation between work and home. After all, most people work around 40 hour weeks, and others double/ crazy finance people, triple, that. ideally we should be hoping that our economy evolves so that we can all work a bit less and still get by, but until that happens, I think a little bit of flexibility needs to be encouraged.
Was it not Addison lee who let their call centre people bring their squawkers into work for a bit? I wonder what happened with that. I shall google.